Arnold Schwarzenegger Will Somehow Play The Terminator In Terminator 5

The whole point of Terminators, and the entire reason Arnold Schwarenegger was cast as the terrifying cyborg to begin with, is that they are superior to humans. Superior strength, superior looks, superior lack of empathy-- they are built to pull off all the things that humans can't. So what happens when a Terminator comes off the factory line and he's gotů wrinkles? And jowls? Has something gone horribly wrong on the Skynet assembly line?

Nope-- it's just an actor clinging on tight to his glory days. We learned back in January that Schwarzenegger planned to return for the lurching-toward-development Terminator 5, which got a step closer to reality last week when Paramount appeared ready to distribute it. Now the eagle-eyed fans at The Arnold Fans have learned-- via a speech Schwarzenegger made at the 21st Century Financial Education Summit in Australia (??)-- that Arnold does indeed plan to return, and in the very same role that made him famous:

"I'm very happy that the studios want me to be in Terminator 5 and to star AS the Terminator, which we start shooting in January."

We wonder if that January start date will make it possible for Fast Five's Justin Lin to direct it, as he'd hoped to do in 2011 before deciding to make Fast & Furious 6. But honestly, the bigger question is just how in the hell Arnold will be playing the Terminator-- ostensibly rolled off an assembly line to look exactly like he did in 1984-- without accounting for the fact that he's aged. We're not ragging on Arnold for getting older-- time comes for all of us, even Mister Universe. When word broke earlier that he planned to be in Terminator 5 it seemed only right, maybe bringing him in as the person who the Terminator design was based off, having gotten a bit older since Skynet rolled out the first edition. And especially with talent like Shutter Island's Laeta Kalogridis and Drive Angry's Patrick Lussier writing the script, they can come up with some workaround to have the Terminator with a few extra wrinkles on his face.

Butů when you're rolling out the fifth installment in a franchise, nearly 30 years after the original debuted, you're already essentially tempting fate. Trying to have a 65-year-old plan the same character he did when he was in his 30s-- a character who is not supposed to age!-- isn't going to make the thing seem any more timely.